Sunlight (In the Empty Corners of My Mind)
by nicnac918
Summary: The trouble with hard-won victories was they weren't the happily ever after you expected. Life kept going on and, still bleeding and bruised, you had to go along with it. Everything isn't magically fixed like it's supposed to be, and some things never will be. Sometimes the best you could hope for was a hand to hold and maybe someday to only be left with scars you could be proud of


There were hypothetically any number of reasons Ryou might want to go to Egypt. In fact, Yugi and Jonouchi had gone during their summer break that year for closure and out of a genuine interest in Egyptology respectively. Not to mention Egypt was a gorgeous country, one that would be nice to visit now that he had more leisure time and wasn't focused on finally – finally, finally, please let him be gone – getting rid of the Millennium Ring. But none of these nor any of the myriad of other excuses that came to mind seemed to properly describe what Ryou was feeling. The truth was, he didn't know why he was going to Egypt.

It was an uncomfortable sort of answer, "I don't know," but it was the truth and Ryou always told the truth these days. Lies, he had learned, were a thing of the body as much as they were the soul. Ryou had never been much practiced in the art of deceit when he had been young, but he found that it now clung to him like a second skin, falsehoods dripping from his lips like honey. They also kept him up all night, pacing the empty rooms of his apartment, headphones blasted on full to drown out the sound of a ghost that was no longer there. Still, when his friends asked why he was going Ryou was planning on telling them it was just something that he felt he needed to do. It was as true a statement as the other, but it sounded a little less crazy. Ryou tried very, very hard not to be crazy.

His friends never did ask him though. A year ago, Ryou might have thought that was due to a lack of interest in him on their part, but a lot – a lot and nothing at all – could change in a year. If nothing else, the frequency with which Jonouchi's arguments with his dad resulting in him needing a place to crash and Anzu's desires to test out a new recipe in Ryou's kitchen because her own was far too crowded coincided with those weeks where the oppressive silence in his apartment weighed down on Ryou, keeping him up until the early hours of the morning, was highly suspicious. Ryou was relatively certain Anzu didn't even _like_ to cook. No, his friends weren't asking because they seem to understand his need to think through this decision on his own. Or, rather, not think because _thinking_ is what had caused his inertia for the last year, what had kept him from going with Yugi and Jonouchi when they had gone months ago. Yugi had offered in that soft unassuming way of his to let Ryou accompany them and had merely accepted it with a maybe slightly sad nod when Ryou's response was to bite out a "no" just a little faster and sharper than necessary.

Honda offered to drive Ryou to the airport on the day of, but Ryou had turned him down as politely as he could. It wasn't that he didn't like motorcycles, but they made him feel… well, he just didn't want to, was all. Ryou tried not to push himself too much. He wasn't entirely convinced this was a good thing, but he didn't think it was a completely bad one either. But Honda corrected his misconception – his sister's husband had a car and because of how well Honda took care of his motorcycle, he was allowed to borrow it on certain special occasions, like giving his friends a ride to the airport. Ryou still turned Honda down anyway, because he had a very early morning flight and you had to arrive extra early for the international flights, and Ryou didn't want to be a bother. Honda laughed and said that that was what friends did for each other. Ryou hadn't known what to say to that.

The night before Ryou didn't go to bed at all. He had a 13 hour flight to Cairo, and it would be nice to be able to waste some of that time sleeping, but he had never been particularly good at falling asleep on airplanes. He thought the exhaustion might help. And if he were exhausted enough on the plane to sleep, then he'd probably be too tired to dream, which was an added bonus. While he hadn't had a nightmare since he'd bought his plane ticket – bad nights, certainly, but no nightmares – but his dreams had all been… odd and he didn't want to know what this particular night might bring. As a result his eyes were probably even more baggy and red-rimmed than Honda's were when he picked Ryou up, and the drive was filled with random pop songs from the radio and not much in the way of conversation.

At the airport Ryou pulled his bags out of the car and turned around only to find Honda had gotten out as well and was now leaning against the passenger side door. "I almost forgot," Honda said, reaching in his back pocket and handing Ryou a carefully folded piece of paper. "Yugi asked me to give you this. In case you wanted it for your trip, he said."

"Thank you," Ryou replied, taking the paper and tucking it into his own pocket. He'd look at it later, when he was waiting to board the plane. "And thank you for the ride."

Honda dismissed his own efforts with a shrug. "Sure thing. Call me when you get back in next week and I'll give you a ride home too."

Ryou nodded – maybe it was ruder to turn down the offer than it was to pull Honda away from whatever else he might be doing to do Ryou a favour.

"And hey, Ryou?" Ryou imagined he could see Honda think of and discard half a dozen different things before settling on, "Good luck."

Ryou did end up being exhausted enough to sleep on the airplane, but not exhausted enough to avoid to dreaming. Luckily something about the feel or maybe the smell of the place tickled old memories in the back of his mind, and his dreams were a mundane sort, ones of him and Amane watching out the window of a plane, making shapes in the clouds, while their mother looked fondly on. It still hurt when he woke up to realize it had only been a dream, but it was old familiar sort of hurt.

Ryou would say that the Cairo airport was much as he remembered from his trip a year ago, but the truth was he didn't remember anything about the inside of the airport at all. This was despite being sure that he had been the one to navigate their group to the location in Yugi's airmail, Ryou's English being the best of all of them – though to Anzu's credit hers was improving every day. The whole trip from last year existed strangely in Ryou's mind, a series of disconnected images and impressions of emotions that seemed like they must have been too strong to ever hold inside of him.

Still, the airport was clearly designed to be accommodating to tourists, so it was easy enough to make his way out and get a bus to the train station. While he was waiting in line to get a ticket, he found himself scanning the list of the upcoming departures, looking for the next train to Luxor. If he was in Egypt for closure, then Luxor seemed like the place to do it. And if it would have made more sense for him to buy a plane ticket to Luxor instead of Cairo, well, this trip hadn't been particularly planned.

Despite that, Ryou couldn't find it in himself to be surprised when he bought a ticket to Alexandria instead.

The train ride seemed shorter than it actually was. It might have been just a comparison, it would be hard not to seem short in contrast to a 13 hour plane flight, but that wouldn't explain the way time seemed to pass in fits and starts. Ryou was sure he'd spent the whole ride looking out the window, watching the country fly by, but when the train finally shuddered to a halt he couldn't remember more than a few brief moments like pictures in his mind.

Outside the train station there were a line of cabs waiting, and Ryou climbed into the first empty one. The driver looked at Ryou and asked, "Where do you want to go?" in heavily accented English.

When he had been little, Ryou had thought that there was something wrong with the way he looked, something that made people know just by glancing at him that he didn't belong. When he got older he learned that it was called being biracial, and it wasn't wrong so much as different, though a lot of times that still seemed like the same thing. When he got even older he learned that belonging comes from within, except at that time within Ryou, hiding deep within the back corners of his mind, was an insane killer. Now he just thought the cab driver must be good at spotting tourists as part of his job.

Ryou reached into his pocket where the paper Honda gave him was still waiting to be looked at. At some point Ryou's subconscious must have figured out what it said, and now unfolding and reading it before he handed it to his driver felt like a mere formality. Yugi had written a title at the top of the page and underneath it was the same address written twice. The first was in Arabic letters written as carefully as the cab driver's English. Underneath was the katakana of how to pronounce the foreign words, though Ryou didn't bother to try. His accent was bound to be horrible.

At the very bottom Yugi had wished Ryou, "Good luck!" just like Honda had and drawn a little smiley face. Ryou didn't think he'd ever had good luck before. He wondered if he'd need it.

The cab deposited Ryou outside a small house deep within a neighbourhood full of small houses. It wasn't at all what he expected, but it looked… nice. Welcoming, and he could see how that might be extra appealing to the inhabitants here. There was a garden out front, and Ryou couldn't imagine which of them maintained it, but it looked good. It almost made Ryou wish he had one.

He walked up to the front door, wheeling his suitcase behind him, and rapped sharply three times. He waited for long enough that he was considering knocking again and starting to worry that no one was home. Finally the door opened.

_Oh_, Ryou thought, _of course_.

Marik Ishtar looked almost just the same as he had the last time Ryou had been in Egypt. His shoulders were a bit broader and something in the lines of his face had become more defined as Marik had matured, but his skin was still the same burnt cinnamon, and his hair was platinum blonde styled in a way the was probably best described as 'artfully tousled' – it had made Ryou a bit jealous occasionally before, because his hair on its very best day was never artfully tousled; it was just messy. Marik was clearly dressed to hang about at home, a black vest and jeans and none of his usual jewellery, though he had still put on his eyeliner. It was a good look for him, Ryou thought.

"You cut your hair," Marik said, apparently too surprised by the change to say anything else.

Ryou ran his hand through his hair, which was now only about seven centimetres at its longest point, just long enough to still be messy, though it was much less obviously so. That gesture had almost become a nervous tick on his part; when he first cut it his head had felt so light and free, he felt the need to remind himself of that. "I needed a change," Ryou offered as explanation.

It was immediately clear that Marik understood what Ryou wasn't exactly saying. Not just in being able to see and sympathize with why Ryou might have needed to do it, but feeling it, bone-deep, the way Ryou did. "It's nice to see you again," Ryou said, and while it sounded like a social nicety, it was truthfully exactly what Ryou felt in that moment.

"You too," Marik said, casting a long look up and down Ryou, maybe to underscore his statement or maybe to catalogue any other changes in Ryou coming from the past year. Physically, there weren't all that many Ryou knew, and mentally… well, that remained to be seen.

They stood there in the doorway for a moment longer just looking at each other, and it seemed like a million things passed between them in that moment, but maybe that was only in Ryou's head. Then Marik shook himself and said, "Sorry, Ishizu would kill me if she knew I'd let a guest stand on the front step for this long. You can come in if you like."

"Thank you," Ryou said, stepping inside and placing his bag down just inside the door.

The inside of the house was cool and dim, all the shades drawn tight against the hot Egyptian sun. Ryou took his shoes off automatically when he stepped inside, but the Ishtars didn't have any slippers by the door so he had to walk through the house in only his socks, his feet sinking deep in the rugs piled everywhere. Marik led Ryou toward the back of the house, past a maze of furniture in warm woods and richly coloured fabrics and all sorts of things. The kind of random assortment of things a teenaged boy who had spent all his life hidden in a tomb underground might pick out if he were to be suddenly unleashed on the world. At least, that was where Ryou imagined they'd come from.

"Ishizu and Rishid aren't home right now," Marik said over his shoulder. "Ishizu's at the university and Rishid's out of town – he's been working a lot to help the other tomb keepers. They would have been here to greet you if we'd known you were coming." There was a lilt to Marik's voice as he said the last sentence, like he was asking a question. It wasn't like Ryou to just show up without checking first to see if it was okay, but Marik couldn't know that. Ryou had only spoken to Marik three times; they didn't know each other at all really.

"I didn't know I was coming either until I got here," Ryou said. It wasn't a good answer, but Marik accepted it without question.

They reached the dining area, where Marik gestured for Ryou take a seat at the table while he got them both some water. There was a heavy book sitting on the table with a pile of papers and loose assortment of pencils next to it. Ryou leaned over to look at the book, and while the words were still only graceful meaningless scribble to him, numbers were numbers. A quick glance at the papers confirmed his guess.

"Algebra?" Ryou asked as Marik placed a glass in front of him before collapsing down in a seat himself.

"I didn't exactly go to school growing up, and most of the things I did learn don't line up with what you get from a general high school education. I'm playing catch-up now."

Ryou nodded. "I had to do that too this past year. I didn't realize how many days of school I missed the year before until I saw how far behind I was." Some of those days he missed he actually had been physically present for class, but most of the time the Spirit of the Ring had found other things he'd rather be doing. Really, it hadn't made much of a difference either way.

"Rishid and Ishizu tried to have me take normal classes too at first. Self-study works better for me," Marik said.

Better could mean a lot of different things. It could mean Marik was learning faster now, or he was retaining more information than he had been. Or it might not be about what he was learning at all. Better could be about the teachers and other students. Ryou thought it wasn't a bad thing if it was, but he also thought Marik didn't want him to pry. "What do you think you'll do after, once you're caught up?" he asked instead.

"I don't…" Marik faltered and his lips pressed together in a tight line, as though by not answering deliberately he could hide he had no answer to give.

"I'm going to Lancaster University, but not until next fall. That's when they start the school year in England," Ryou said to cover over the silence.

"England? Why England?"

"My mother was English. She used to take my sister and I back there for two weeks every summer to visit our grandparents. I can't stay where I am anymore, there's too much… but I'm not brave enough to go somewhere new."

"New is overrated," Marik said.

Ryou found himself looking around – new for Marik was this house, from what he'd been told the Ishtars had moved here maybe a year ago. He knew where Marik had been and what his life had been before this new, and Ryou was having a hard time seeing how this cosy house wouldn't be an improvement.

Marik noticed him looking, obviously, and was able to guess Ryou's train of thought. He gave a very dry look and said, "Better is not the same thing as good." The truth of that echoed in Ryou's head with the screams of a thousand nightmares Ryou had had since his last trip to Egypt. He still wasn't sure what Marik's complaints were, but he knew he had no call to say he had none.

"At least you have Ishizu and Rishid," Ryou offered. All Ryou had was Amane, who could never reply to any of the letters Ryou wrote to her and his friends. Not that he didn't treasure his connection to his sister in whatever form or that his friends weren't amazing and supportive, it would just be nice if… Well, there were a lot of things that would be nice really, but Ryou tried not to dwell on them or wish for them, even in his head. He'd seen what unrestrained want and envy and wrath could do, and Ryou wanted himself to be better than that. Better and smaller.

Marik's answering expression was only about half a smile, and a thoroughly baffled one at that. "Yes. I do."

Ryou met Marik's half-smile with one of his own. "My grandmother used to tell my sister and I when we were little to take the time to count our blessing, because you would always find you had more than you realized."

"Do you really believe that?" Marik asked. His tone was dismissive but Ryou imagined he could see the light of something in his eyes.

"Sometimes," Ryou answered honestly. "Not as much as I did right after, but more than I did six months before that."

Marik nodded, but seemed to have nothing further to say on the subject. Ryou let his gaze fall down to his now-empty water glass, clutched between both his hands. "Did you want some more?" Marik asked.

Ryou shook his head. "No, thank you." The silence stretched out between them, thick and oppressive. He hadn't thought this through at all. He knew that not thinking about it was the only thing that had gotten him this far, but now he was left rudderless, with no idea what to say or do. The thing of it was, Ryou just wasn't a very interesting person. He was very small. He didn't mind that at all himself, he didn't want to be big or important; he just wanted to be an ordinary person. At most he wanted to be an ordinary person with slightly unusual interests. But Marik was interesting and extraordinary, and was now likely sitting there with no more idea what this small ordinary person was doing at his kitchen table than Ryou did.

"I'm sorry I interrupted your work," Ryou finally said. Perhaps he should offer to leave and let Marik get back to it.

Marik shrugged. "I wasn't getting anywhere with it. Rishid the one who's good at math. I'll probably just have to wait until he gets back next week."

"Oh." Ryou licked his lips. "I don't know if I'm especially good at math, but I did well enough on my final exam, I suppose. I could try helping you. If you like."

"You didn't come to all the way to Egypt to help me with math," Marik said. He began putting his papers away.

"I might have," Ryou said. He knew he'd come to see Marik, but he hadn't figured that out until Marik opened the door, and beyond that… Here now was something Ryou could do, something good and useful, so he would do it. As long as Ryou kept his forward momentum up, he'd figure out where he was going eventually.

Marik looked at him oddly, like Ryou was a puzzle he was trying to solve. No, like Ryou was a puzzle he had solved, only to find the picture wasn't what he had been expecting. He pulled the text book back over to him and opened it. "Okay. Let's do math."

It was difficult at first. Ryou couldn't read anything in the text book and Marik didn't understand the information, making it hard for him to translate it well enough for Ryou to understand it. Eventually they managed to sort through it well enough that Ryou could teach the concept to Marik, and Marik began working his way through the problems. With each one he got better at it, until he was moving through them easily. He began asking Ryou about the others back in Domino as he worked, about Yugi and Jonouchi and the rest, how they were doing, what was going on in their lives. Ryou told him and asked the same questions about Ishizu and Rishid in turn. Soon they were catching up like the two of them were old friends and not barely more than strangers.

Neither of them realized how much time had passed, not until they heard the front door open. "Ishizu!" The word came out almost as a yelp as Marik leapt up from the table.

"Marik," was Ishizu's answering call from the front of the house. Her voice was warm, amused, fond, exasperated, and affectionate all in equal measure. Her voice was exactly what a sister sounded like. The thought hit Ryou with a pang; he hadn't realized he'd forgotten the sound.

"Sorry, I haven't started dinner yet. We have a guest and I got distracted." All of this was said in Japanese, just as Ryou and Marik had been speaking to each other the entire time, just as he assumed the Ishtars didn't usually use to talk to each other. He could only guess that had served as a clue to Ishizu, as when the two of them met her in the living room, she didn't seem the least bit surprised by Ryou.

"Hello, Bakura. How nice to see you again," she said pleasantly.

"Ryou," he corrected automatically, then immediately flushed at his own rude behaviour. "I apologize. It's nice to see you again too, of course. But I prefer to be called Ryou. I move to England in a few months and they usually go by their given names there." It was true; Ryou wouldn't lie. But it was the lesser truth, the more polite truth than the other, which Ryou would only admit to if asked.

Marik's lips twitched a little, but Ishizu remained perfectly serene. "Ryou then. What brings you to Egypt, Ryou? How long will you be staying for?"

"My flight back to Japan is in a week. As to what I'm doing in Egypt… so far I'm here to help Marik with his math."

Ryou didn't know Ishizu any better than he had known Marik, but he had heard his friends describe her before as someone who could be aloof and distant. He wondered if she hadn't instead merely been distracted by the myriad of futures passing in front of her, because she now looked at Ryou with an intensity of focus that felt as though she was piercing straight through to the heart of him. "I see," she said. Then she offered him a smile and the momentary spell was broken. "I'm sure Rishid will be sorry to have missed you, but it's fortunate timing that he won't be back until you leave, since you can stay in his room while you're here."

"I couldn't possibly," Ryou began, but Ishizu cut him off.

"I insist. If we called Rishid he would insist as well, but no need to bother him for that. I will make dinner this evening, Marik; you can continue to keep Ryou company." With that Ishizu swept out of the room to the kitchen.

"Might as well do what she says," Marik suggested. "Ishizu always gets her way sooner or later." Ryou would never say it, but he supposed Marik's presence here in this house, rather than stuck in a tomb underground or off abroad running an international crime syndicate was proof of that. Besides, he thought maybe this again was an occasion where turning down the offer was ruder than imposing.

The rest of the evening passed surprisingly quickly, and before long Ryou found himself heading to Rishid's room for the night. He had expected he would have an easy time falling asleep that night. It was already clear to early the following morning his time, and he had a tiring day of traveling behind him. Too, Rishid's room was an unfamiliar place. For someone else that might have been off-putting, but for Ryou it was a comfort. Walls couldn't echo sounds they'd never heard. What Ryou had forgotten was there was nowhere he could travel beyond the walls of his own mind. So he lay in an unfamiliar bed, listening to echoes.

He got out of bed and moved softly out into the hall. All the shades were still drawn and the moon was new, making the darkness inside absolute. He wondered how he looked against that darkness, a pale silent figure, drifting insubstantially down the hall. His next footstep he brought down just a little harder, not enough to disturb, but enough that his feet lightly slapped as they hit the ground and he could feel the slightest sting from the force of it.

Ryou slowly opened Marik's door and peeked inside. He didn't want to wake Marik up if he was already asleep, no matter how much Ryou needed to hear someone else's voice – a real voice – to fill the silence. Marik's room was dominated by a huge bed with lump right in the middle of it. Ryou stared to close the door again, thinking he'd go get his headphones and blare music until he was exhausted enough to fall asleep, when the lump rolled over and Marik sat up. "Ryou?"

"Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you. Sorry."

"Did you need something?" Marik asked.

Ryou bit his lip. "I… Do you think ghosts can have ghosts?" It wasn't what he meant to say, but it was what he felt, and it came out anyway.

"Yes." Marik's answer was swift and definite. That wasn't what Ryou had been expecting. He wasn't sure it was the answer he wanted either. He had been half-expecting Marik to tell him that he was acting crazy and to go back to bed. As much as Ryou didn't want to be crazy, he wasn't sure that wasn't better, if the alternative was being right.

He stood there frozen in the hall for a long moment. Marik sighed, and tossed back one side of his blanket, leaving an open space on the bed next to him. "Close the door behind you," he commanded.

Ryou understood what Marik wanted right away, but still he hesitated. Only for a moment though before doing what he told himself he would: he kept moving forward. The blanket on the bed was hardly more than a sheet, but the way it settled over the two of them, lying side-by-side facing each other, felt heavy and comforting and safe.

"Ishizu has to get up early in the morning for work. I didn't want us talking to wake her," Marik explained in a hushed tone.

"I see. That's considerate," Ryou said.

"I…" Marik licked his lips, then continued all in a rush. "I'm not a good person, you know. I want to be one, but I'm not that good at it. I'm just not very nice. Not like you. You're really nice."

"Oh. Thank you," Ryou said. "But, well, it's not that I'm trying to be nice, exactly. I just worry that – I just don't want to be a bother for anyone." Sometimes that seemed like all he was ever trying to do, and yet he always wound up inconveniencing them anyway.

"You're not a bother to me," Marik told him, though what mattered to Ryou wasn't what he said; it was the way he said it. The words weren't insistent or gentle, like someone who was saying them merely to be kind. Marik's tone was matter-of-fact because he'd said what he had because it was the truth. Ryou had shown up to his house unannounced, woken him in the middle of the night to ask about ghosts, and was now in his bed, and Marik didn't think he was a bother.

Suddenly it all came pouring out, every nightmare, every terror, every shadow Ryou had jumped at, every filthy rotted secret held up inside him. He shared them all with Marik, who calmly and silently listened without judgment or well-intentioned but unwanted comfort. Ryou talked and talked and talked until his mouth grew dry and his throat began to sore and he didn't know if he could get another word out. When he stopped, Marik waited for just a moment before taking his turn to share the demons festering inside him. Between the two of them, they talked until the light of dawn began peeking around the edge of the curtains, when they finally drifted off to sleep.

For the entire week he was there, Ryou never stepped foot outside the Ishtar house. He and Marik usually didn't wake up until lunchtime, and found plenty to do to occupy themselves during what remained of the day. They chatted about Ryou's upcoming plans in England, about the places Marik had been and the things he'd seen in his world travels, about Marik's siblings, and about Yugi and everyone back in Domino. They spent time on Marik's studies, Ryou helping him with math or Marik teaching Ryou the various languages he was learning, which seemed to always end up in a debate over American versus British English. They played games. Marik didn't play Duel Monsters anymore, but the Ishtars had a deck of regular cards to play with. Neither Marik nor Ryou had any talent for chess, but the chessboard made for a reasonable makeshift Monster World board. The first time Ryou had tried to play the game after everything he'd had a panic attack and ended up huddled under the table with Yugi sitting comfortingly nearby while Anzu shooed everyone else out. Now Ryou was able to teach Marik without so much as a stutter, so long as he stuck to using his left hand. In the evening Marik would make dinner, and Ryou would help, adding the Egyptian dishes to his repertoire of Japanese and British cuisine. Ishizu would come home and the three of them would have the closest thing to a family dinner Ryou had had in a long time.

Nights though, nights were different. Every night after he was certain Ishizu had gone to sleep, Ryou would make his way from Rishid's room to Marik's. He would climb into bed with Marik and the two of them would share all the things they couldn't tell anyone else and all the things the daylight hours weren't fit to hear. Ryou told Marik about the unfiled holes in his memory and how each empty space gnawed at his soul, and Marik told Ryou he could remember each and every last despicable thought and action of his other personality. Marik appreciated his sibling's support, but their care and concern made him feel smothered and unable to move away from his past; Ryou's father had never even noticed anything had been wrong with him. Ryou had a row of round scars forming a semi-circle on his chest; Marik had a masterpiece writ in pain and agony across his back. The one thing Marik didn't regret doing was murdering his father; Ryou suspected he might be the cause of Pegasus's disappearance.

On the second to last night, just as the sun was rising and the two of them were drifting off to sleep, Marik whispered, "Sometimes I still miss him." It came without context, but there was no question who "he" was, not with Marik sounding guilty for the very first time.

The best thing that ever happened to Ryou was when he was finally freed of the Spirit of the Ring. Ryou had spent night after night detailing to Marik all the horrors visited on him by that creature. He ought to be resentful of Marik's statement, and yet… And yet, Ryou's head had stretched over the years, more accustomed to one mind than two, and sometime silence echoed louder than any word could. So all he said was, "Sometimes I do too."

On the final evening, Ishizu came home with a train schedule and they discovered Ryou's train to Cairo would be leaving shortly after Rishid's train from Luxor arrived the following morning. Ishizu offered to take Ryou to the station with her when she went to pick up Rishid, and also suggested Marik could tag along, if he wanted to get up that early.

"You don't have to," Ryou said. "We can say our goodbyes tonight."

"It's not a bother," Marik insisted, though Ryou knew getting up that early would be a bother for him.

"I know," Ryou said, because he also knew exactly what Marik meant by that. "Still…" After a moment, Marik nodded.

The two of them lingered in the living room very late that evening, as if pretending it was still daytime might fend off the encroaching night and the morning to follow. But eventually, they had to make their way back to the bedrooms.

When Marik placed his hand on the knob to his bedroom door, Ryou spoke. "I should actually sleep in Rishid's room tonight. Ishizu…" He took a few steps further down the hall.

Marik reached out and grabbed Ryou's hand. "Stay. Just until I fall asleep."

Ryou looked down at their joined hands. Marik's dark skin further browned by the sun and perfectly trimmed and shaped nails. Ryou's skin so pale he could almost imagine it glowed in the dark and his nails chewed and bitten to the quick. He laced their fingers together. "Okay."

"Ryou?" He opened his eyes the next morning to see Ishizu standing in the doorway, looking neither surprised nor perturbed to find Ryou here, in Marik's room, in Marik's bed, tangled up in Marik. "We need to leave for the train station in half an hour," she told him.

Ryou stared at her for a few long moments, but Ishizu merely looked idly back, apparently only interested in confirmation he was awake. "I'll be down in a few minutes," he finally told her. Ishizu nodded and left, closing the door again behind her.

It took a full minute of that time to pull himself away from Marik without waking him up. Ryou stood there next to the bed, looking down at Marik, memorizing him just as he was in that moment. His hair was actually messy for once, his skin was warm and soft with sleep, and his right arm was stretched out with the fingers curled, as though Marik were grasping for something just beyond his reach. They hadn't said their good-byes last night like they'd said they would, not really, but…

One thing Ryou had always regretted was not saying goodbye to his mother and Amane, especially Amane. His mother had died on impact, but Amane had lived long enough to make it to the hospital and for another twenty minutes after she'd arrived. Ryou just hadn't gotten there fast enough. But looking down at Marik now, Ryou realized actually saying goodbye would have broken his heart, and afterwards they still would have been gone and he still would have missed them. It wouldn't have changed anything. So Ryou simply smiled down at Marik's sleeping form, whispered once last soft "thank you" and quietly slipped out.

When Ryou and Ishizu got to the train station, she helped him purchase his ticket to Cairo and pointed out his platform to him – both things Ryou could have managed on his own, but the Arabic-speaking Ishizu certainly managed them much more easily and quickly – before asking him to walk her to Rishid's platform. He knew she didn't need him to walk her, but he didn't mind keeping her company while she waited for her brother to arrive.

"Thank you for coming out to visit us," Ishizu said.

Ryou shook his head. "Thank you for your hospitality. I know I showed up out of nowhere, but this trip was important for me. I feel… happy." It was as though he'd spent the last seven nights extracting the poison out of his soul and now he was better than he had been in a very long time.

"Good. You both deserve happiness. We all do. We will see you again." The last sentence was said with such surety Ryou found himself glancing down at her neck for the Millennium Necklace he knew wasn't there.

She placed her hand on the spot where the eye of the necklace would have rested and gave him a sad smile. "We may be free, but we all bear our own scars." She reached up to give Ryou a pat on the cheek, an oddly maternal gesture. "You're a good boy, Ryou, and you'll do well by each other. I'm glad it ended up being you."

"I…" Ryou's hands clenched and unclenched uselessly as he struggled to come up with a response when he hardly understood what she meant, but he needn't have bothered. Ishizu caught sight of something over his shoulder and with one last smile for him, walked off toward it. Ryou turned around to see her approaching Rishid. Ryou and Rishid's eyes met for just a moment, and Rishid nodded at Ryou, a gesture of acknowledgment and gratitude and fondness and appreciation and a million other things Ryou couldn't name. Then Rishid turned back to Ishizu and chatting amiably in Arabic, the two of them left.

Ryou watched them go before heading over to his own platform. He found a bench drenched in the hot morning sunshine, and sat to wait for his train.

* * *

England suited Ryou, better than he remembered. Or maybe it hadn't before and did now because he was a different person now than he had been. He was certain he had never liked the rain so much before. He'd hear people describe the constantly overcast skies as heavy and oppressive and gloomy, but when the rain drizzled down, barely enough to lightly dust his hair, it struck Ryou as painfully fragile. Then a storm would roll in and the rain would sleet down in heavy sheets of water and thunder would shake the sky like it was declaring it was here and it was itself and nobody could stop that. Ryou found it comforting.

Yet every single night when the darkness was vast and empty, he found himself missing the scorching Egyptian sun so fiercely it hurt. He accepted that longing and that hurt as a part of himself now and moved on. He was very good at that.

Ryou walked up the steps of his building, but froze once he reached the landing. His flat was down at the very end of the long hallway, far enough away that the person sitting next to his door should have been unidentifiable. Should have been, but Ryou was certain he would always recognize Marik, no matter the place or time. That was a part of him too.

Marik looked over at the sound of Ryou's footsteps, then scrambled to his feet. He was awkward and clumsy getting up, all knees and elbows, but once he was stood he took on a poise of lazy self-assured confidence. Ryou wasn't sure which of the two were the real Marik. He thought maybe they both were.

Ryou came to a stop less than a meter away – closer than he would for most people, but much farther away than they had been. Marik still looked just the same as he had over a year ago, the same as he always had, broad shoulders and narrow hips and cinnamon skin, with one obvious difference. "You're wearing a sweater." Ryou didn't think he'd ever seen Marik in sleeves before.

"It's _cold_," Marik said, glaring as though he was holding Ryou personally responsible for that.

Ryou smiled. "I thought it was actually a nice day out." Overcast, but still with enough lingering summer warmth to not need his overcoat.

"_England_." Marik pronounced it like it was a swear word, but his favourite swear word. He huddled in on himself and shuddered dramatically.

"Come inside," Ryou offered, going to unlock his front door. He didn't ask why Marik was here. It didn't matter why really; it was enough for Ryou that he was.

"I finished catching up. With my school work," Marik announced abruptly once they'd entered Ryou's flat.

"That's great," Ryou said. There had never been any doubt in his mind that Marik would, and would do it quickly. Marik was intelligent, capable, resourceful, and driven – traits which Ryou lacked, except possibly intelligence, and he admired them in Marik all the more for that.

Marik nodded. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his jeans and his eyes were trained somewhere around Ryou's knees. "I decided the next step would be to go to university. I couldn't stay where I was anymore, and I thought I'd be brave enough to try someplace new, if I had a friend there."

Oh. So this was what it felt like to have his breath taken away by something good rather than something horrifying. It was a more pleasant experience than Ryou would have expected, if he had ever thought it possible enough to happen to him to be worth the bother of expecting. "I thought new was overrated."

Marik pulled his hands out of his pockets and held them in the air between them, with the sleeves of his sweater drawn over them to make his point. Ryou laughed, in humour, in joy, in relief. Poor weather was something that could be borne. Ryou was certain there would be much complaining in the process, but it was the troubles that went without complaint that were truly terrible.

"I could make you a hot cup of tea," Ryou offered.

"Yes. Please." Marik looked so pathetically grateful at that, like a bedraggled kitten finally brought in out of the rain and allowed a place in front of the fire. In that moment Ryou didn't think he'd ever wanted anything more.

"Sit down; I'll bring it over in a minute," Ryou said. Marik did not sit, instead following Ryou into his small kitchen and taking up residence there, leaning against the counter across from the sink. Ryou didn't mind. "Sorry I wasn't here when you arrived," he said, filling the kettle with water and setting it to boil. "I was out to lunch with some of my friends from university."

"Friends?" The question was asked with an idle interest, obviously more to keep the conversation going than anything. With anyone else, Ryou might have gotten self-conscious about boring them, but with Marik, he knew it wasn't a bother. It never would be.

"Yes. I'll have to introduce you to them soon." Ryou began described each of his new friends as the water boiled and tea bags steeped and Marik listened with an air of lazy indifference. "They aren't like our friends back in Domino, of course. They don't know anything about Millennium Items or shadow games or any of that." Deciding the tea had probably steeped for long enough, he threw the bags in the trash and got out the milk and sugar. "But they are kind and very… normal. They make me feel like I'm normal. It's nice. Did you want anything in your tea?"

"I want." The sentence was said forcefully, but then abruptly cut off. Ryou turned around in concern. Marik had dropped his look of indifference, and now had his left hand wrapped around his right wrist, gripping so tightly his knuckles were starting to turn pale. His face was turned toward Ryou, but his eyes looked slightly unfocused, distant. Ryou recognized that look. Right after everything, Ryou hadn't been able to wear anything around his neck, no scarves, no ties, no turtlenecks, and especially no necklaces. Whenever he had he could feel his neck being squeezed tighter and tighter, cutting off his air until the world went faded and black. He still didn't think he'd ever be able to wear any kind of necklace again, but he could wear ties now, so that was something.

Ryou reached over and entwined his fingers in Marik's slack right hand. He was careful not to grip too hard, but tight enough to be felt. Tight enough to say "Don't worry, I've got you_"_ and "I'm not going to let go_"_. Marik blinked a few times, and it was only after he focused again that Ryou carefully pulled his left hand loose so he could wrap his fingers through that one too.

"It's okay," Ryou said, and it was. They were messy and they'd been beaten down and broken, and he didn't know if they'd come out any better for it, but it was over now and they were still here. They were here and together and they were going to be okay.

As if to underscore Ryou's words, the clouds outside parted and a shaft of sunlight spilled in through the kitchen window and across the floor. The light warmed Ryou's back and glistened against the highlights in Marik's hair. Marik stared at Ryou's face intently and whatever he was looking for, he must have found. His lips curled up slowly into a lazy smile and he tugged on their joined hands. Ryou stumbled one, two steps closer. He almost fell right into Marik. He thought maybe he already had. Marik pressed their foreheads together and softly said, "Okay."


End file.
